


departure

by stardustgirl



Series: Rebels Oneshots [27]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: Rise of Empire Era - All Media Types
Genre: 4 + 1, 4 + 1 + 1, 4 + 2, Angst, Canon Compliant, Five Times, Four Times, Gen, Medium Angst, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series, Tristan Wren Appreciation Week, Tristan Wren Appreciation Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 02:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16546655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustgirl/pseuds/stardustgirl
Summary: Four times Sabine left, one time he went with her, and one time she stayed.{Tristan Wren Appreciation Week 2018}





	departure

**Author's Note:**

> Tristan Wren Appreciation Week
> 
> Day Three: "Departure"

The first time she left, he was ten, and she was going to Sundari because she’d made it into the Academy.

He had cried as he clung to her, and though she had proudly proclaimed she wouldn’t at dinner the night before, he saw her shedding tears as well as she gently extracted herself from his grip and headed to the waiting shuttle.

* * *

The second time she left, he was twelve, bordering on thirteen, and old enough to know now what she was talking about when she came home, nearly hysterical about the Academy and what she had done there—by listening in on her conversations with Mother and Father about something called the Duchess that she made sound like an oath but seemed more like a weapon when she described it.

She left Krownest in the night, after eavesdropping on Mother and her counselors and hearing them decide to exile her.

She hadn’t known that he had been listening, too.

* * *

The third time she left, the third time that he didn’t go with her, was when she was nineteen and an adult and he was seventeen and still cursing dead men.

The Duchess had been destroyed, and his sister had returned.

Until she hadn’t.

They sat at a campfire the night Bo-Katan Kryze became _Mand’alor_ , and she only watched the fire with clasped hands and elbows on knees as he leaned back, occasionally poking at it with a stick he had found.  Her Jedi and their astromech had left them alone, as if knowing they needed to talk things out.

Finally he cleared his throat, surprising himself.  Normally he let her take the lead, as she was the heir.  But her attention was drawn to him in the form of her gaze flicking to meet his across the flames regardless, and he had to speak.

“I want you to stay.”

She shook her head slowly, and he sighed inwardly, even though he had already known it would come to this.

“I can’t.”

That was it.

* * *

The first time she left and took him with her, he was just barely seventeen, and one of her Jedi had returned to plead for their help.

She looked at him, her eyes explaining that she had had a family alongside his.

It stung to see that the Jedi had replaced him, but he nodded, understanding that the Jedi would come to free their own planet afterward.

It wasn’t until later that he understood that the Jedi’s role was alongside his own, and not in place of.

* * *

The first time she stayed, he was mostly sixteen and nearly seventeen and mostly bitter and nearly murderous, and she was mostly okay and had just nearly been killed.

If their mother had hesitated just another moment longer, if he hadn’t turned his back on the ISC, if she had been a second too late in blocking the man’s last blow--

She would explain, later, after she told her Jedi and their astromech that she would not return with them, that if he hadn’t joined the ISC there would’ve been nothing  _ to _ return to.

It still took him many nights of shameful reasoning to accept that.

Even after she had remained.


End file.
